`Big River` Will Flow To Arie Crown In March

December 11, 1985|By Richard Christiansen, Entertainment editor.

A new touring company of ``Big River,`` the Tony Award-winning musical based on ``The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,`` will make its first stop on the road here in Chicago in March, opening the three-show musical subscription series of the Arie Crown Theatre in McCormick Place.

The show, which picked up seven Tonys last spring, has a score by Roger Miller and a book by William Hauptman, based on the novel by Mark Twain. Des McAnuff is the director, but no casting for the road company has yet been made.

Following ``Big River,`` which opens March 4, will be two Tony-winning shows from the 1983-84 Broadway season: ``The Tap Dance Kid,`` the story of a youngster who wants to be a tap dancer, and winner of the 1984 choreography Tony, starting April 15; and ``La Cage aux Folles,`` the 1984 Tony winner as best musical about two gay lovers who run a transvestite night club on the French Riviera, opening June 3. No casting has been announced for either show.

The three musicals will open their engagements here with two-week subscription runs. Subscription prices range from $29 (top balcony) to $81.50 (main floor), which buys a ticket for each musical.

Subscriptions are available by mail order through check, money order or credit card from Arie Crown (with a $5 handling charge and self-addressed stamped envelope to be included) or by phone, 791-6000.

-- Nine small off-Loop troupes are combining to present a three-weekend

``developing theaters`` festival next spring.

Sponsored by the developing theaters committee of the League of Chicago Theaters, the festival is designed to encourage theatergoers to see programming offered by some of the new, small theaters in the city. The programs are set to open March 21 in the Victory Gardens Studio Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave., with a bill of short works by three theaters. It will be followed the next two weekends with similar triple bills.

Also scheduled for the festival is a program by the City Lit troupe, whose director, Arnold Aprill, is chairman of the developing theaters committee.

The nine theaters were picked from 25 groups who submitted their statements of purpose to the committee.

Admission is tentatively set at $5 a program, with a substantial discount for customers who buy the whole series.

-- Trazana Beverley, winner of a 1977 Tony Award for her featured role in ``For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf,`` and John Cothran Jr., seen in Chicago in 1982 in ``Sizwe Banzi Is Dead,`` have been cast in the title roles of Athol Fugard`s ``Boesman and Lena,`` due Jan. 22 at Northlight Theatre in Evanston under the direction of Woodie King Jr.

The production marks the Chicago directorial debut of King, producer of the New Federal Theatre of the Henry Street Settlement in New York.

-- David Darlow, currently starring in Northlight Theatre`s production of ``The Real Thing`` at the Briar Street Theatre, has been appointed acting artistic director of the Oak Park Festival Theatre, which presents annual summer productions of Shakespeare.

Patrick O`Gara, the festival director, is on a leave of absence, teaching at Illinois State University in Normal.